List of All Articles with Tag 'linguistics'

Americans favor 'Merry Christmas,' while Brits opt for 'Happy Christmas.' Here's how we got here.

What is a placebo? Technically, a Latin phrase meaning ‘I will please.’ It’s also a Catholic prayer and a clever insult.

If linguistics is any indicator, it would appear that everybody in the spirit realm speaks Scots English.

By the late 1700s, laborers adopted the insult to refer to workers who wouldn’t join a strike, a union, or take part in organized labor and undermined their fellow workers.

From ‘cakewalk’ to ‘no can do,’ the origins of these common idioms and sayings are surprisingly dark.

Non-Philadelphians can finally look up the meaning of ‘jawn’ in the dictionary.

In English we have a few different ways to write the sound of a kiss: muah, smack, xxx. They get the idea across, but none of them imitate the actual sound of a kiss.

Here’s why some homophone examples also work as homograph and homonym examples.

Is it coleslaw or cold slaw? Deep-seated or deep-seeded? There are right answers, but the wrong ones seem kind of right, too.

From acrophobia (the fear of heights) to zuigerphobia (the fear of vacuum cleaners), there are plenty of things to be scared of—rationally or otherwise.

The ‘laying vs. lying’ situation is tricky—but direct objects can help.

The connections between words aren’t always as straightforward as the link between run and runner; often, figuring them out requires the subtle unraveling of linguistic evolution, the kind of detective work that makes etymology so fascinating.